Philippians 4: 1-9 Matthew 22: 1-14
When the God of love bids you welcome, do you draw back guilty of dust and sin, to quote the poet George Herbert?
Are you, like the speaker in Herbert’s poem Love (III), unsure of your worthiness to be at the feast of God’s love?
Do you instinctively shy away from grace and offend your host with a surfeit of over-charged humility?
George Herbert’s poem ‘Love bade me welcome’ is a reflection on the rubrics of the service of Holy Communion in the Book of Common Prayer. Each line in his poem has an equivalent instruction in that liturgy carefully inscribed by Thomas Cranmer to ensure the right reception of the Sacrament by those who have prepared themselves for this foretaste of heaven as part of their journey through life to the heavenly banquet prepared for them before the dawn of time.
Today’s gospel reading, therefore, with its urgency and harsh conduct, must be read through the rhythms and cadences of the very act of worship in which we are engaged right now – in which we are called to the altar of God even to the God of our joy and gladness. On its own, the gospel reading is strong meat and the faint-hearted might fall before they reach the Communion station let alone reach the divine altar of that country far beyond the stars.
In today’s gospel reading, we learn of the free act of kindness which God – without obligation – offers to his people through the voice of the prophets: an offer which is turned down by those who fail to understand the urgency of God’s call and whose complacency has made them careless with the things of God.
And so God reissues his invitation to the people who have dealings along the main streets: the tax collectors and people in despised trades (including no doubt prostitutes). But they must hurry because everything has been prepared. It’s ready – a word repeated, like mum’s urgent call upstairs to the kids to come down for tea before it gets cold. And suddenly, people who didn’t know that God loved them and wanted to be their friend start arriving at the feast.
And perhaps they more than most were conscious of their shortcomings – unsure of their worthiness to be at the feast of God’s love – like the speaker in George Herbert’s poem.
And what does that consciousness do to them? It makes them turn away from sin and become faithful to Christ: repentance articulated in the act of putting on a wedding garment – not to look good but to demonstrate a converted life full of good deeds. Except, that is, for the one guest who was somehow the antithesis of the voice in George Herbert’s poem and who doesn’t recognise his shame. This one guest for whom the grace of God has meant nothing and who has arrived in response to the call but who hasn’t changed as a response to the call – even at the eleventh hour.
At Holy Communion in the Book of Common Prayer, even before the priest at the very beginning of the liturgy prays alone the Lord’s Prayer, there is a long rubric in which those who intend to partake of Holy Communion are instructed in very practical terms to make good any wrong they have done to their neighbours or to resolve any ill-feeling that exists between them and other members of the community. They are instructed to put on the wedding garment of repentance and reconciliation before attending the banquet.
The Prayers of Penitence towards the beginning of our eucharistic liturgy are no small thing and are the liturgical ‘sine qua non’ to our approach to the altar of God – the God of our joy and gladness: our host at the feast.
And from that Prayer Book rubric flows the beauty of George Herbert’s poetry. He is the poet who most expresses our relationship with God as a friendship. In ‘Love bade me welcome’, the speaker decides that they are not worthy to respond to the call to be a guest at the God of love’s feast but quick-eyed ‘Love’ observing them grow slack from their first entrance in, draws nearer to them sweetly questioning if they lack anything.
And the gracious dialogue which follows seems a world away from the latter part of our gospel reading this morning in which the sinner who failed to repent is thrown away into the outer darkness to weep and gnash their teeth for all eternity.
I struggle with that image and even now I have no smart answers for you. I prefer George Herbert and his Christ who tells the sinner, ‘I’ve taken the blame away from you by bearing it myself on your behalf because I realised that you were never going to be able to sort it all out for yourself. So sit down and eat.’
Does that make me – and perhaps George Herbert too – like the invited guests in the parable who failed to see the urgency of it all?
Or does it make us all the more conscious of the grace of God here right now in this Eucharist for which we hold out our hands in all humility and ask for God’s mercy.
Elsewhere, Jesus said, ‘All those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’